Dead Sea · With kids

One splash in the eyes ends the afternoon, and nobody should swim face-down or duck under. Under-eights usually get more out of the resort pools than the sea, with a short supervised float as the novelty.

Open 9am to 5pm, four short sections on how the lake formed, what lives around it and why it is shrinking. Small, air-conditioned, and it takes about half an hour, which is the right length.

The tourist board's promenade along the shore, with cycling tracks, green space and family recreation areas — the one stretch here you can walk along without paying to go through a gate.

St George's church holds the 6th-century mosaic map, and the Archaeological Park nearby is 3 JD. Both are compact and mostly under cover, which makes them the better ruins for children than a long open site.

Three dinars, twenty minutes from Madaba, and short enough that nobody complains: a hilltop church with the view down over the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea that the whole Moses story hangs on.